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Faced with hardening opposition from President George W. Bush and Republican members of Congress, Democratic leaders said it is unlikely that they would get a bailout for automakers passed in the upcoming lame-duck session. They are increasingly accepting the possibility that a rescue for the Detroit Three, along with economic-stimulus measures targeted to middle-class families and workers, would have to wait until the inauguration President-elect Barack Obama.

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Companies without perfect credit needing the Federal Reserve's commercial-paper program are turning, as a last resort, to lines of credit negotiated before the credit crisis. An economist said most of the companies do not want the loans but are taking them rather than paying twice as much in interest for commercial paper not backed by the Fed.

The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority fined Richard Ralph, a former British ambassador to Peru and Romania, £117,691.41 for violating insider-trading rules when he asked a friend to buy shares in Monterrico Metals for him. While serving as chairman of Monterrico and participating in takeover negotiations with China's Zijin Consortium, Ralph persuaded Filip Boyen to buy Monterrico shares to sidestep disclosure requirements.

The pound fell to its lowest value against the dollar in 6 1/2 years, as investors positioned themselves for a steep interest-rate cut from the Bank of England. Simultaneously, the pound reached an all-time low against the euro. A trader described the pound as "the winner of the global foreign-exchange ugly contest."

Analysts said $103 billion of synthetic collateralized debt obligations are vulnerable to catastrophic losses, based on defaults involving underlying derivatives. Defaults by Lehman Brothers and other institutions already touched off $24 billion in synthetic CDO losses. JPMorgan Chase said there is about $757 billion of synthetic CDOs outstanding that are tied solely to corporate-debt derivatives.

Australia's proposed rules for short selling are setting up a battle between the regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and the fund-management industry. The rules would require investors to reveal their stock lending and short sales daily. "Once these regulations are in place and the ban on shorting is lifted, Australia can lay claim to having one of the most progressive disclosure systems for short selling," an analyst at RiskMetrics said.